Review: 'The Man He Became' by James Tobin

Tom Moran

In 1921 Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the former assistant secretary of the Navy during the Woodrow Wilson administration and Democratic nominee for vice president the previous year, must have seemed to be a preternaturally fortunate man. Still very much in his prime, handsome, charming, wealthy and well-connected (he was distantly related to former President Theodore Roosevelt, whose niece he had married), he had decided at an early age to emulate his eminent relative and enter politics with the aim of eventually capturing the White House himself.

Granted, he had been on the ticket that had been trounced by Republicans Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge in their 1920 landslide, but no one blamed him for the loss, and he was a serious contender for the Democratic nomination for president, conceivably as early as 1924.

It was all the more shocking, then, that the 39-year-old Roosevelt, a man with such a promising political future, should be stricken by a disease usually associated with the immigrant children of squalid inner city slums, a disease that would threaten not only his political career but his life.

This is the story that James Tobin, author of the award-winning "Ernie Pyle's War," has chosen to tell in his new book, "The Man He Became: How FDR Defied Polio to Win the Presidency."

Tobin does us all a service by reminding us how difficult life was for the disabled early in the previous century. "Most disabled people spent their lives either as shut-ins in the homes of relatives or beggars on the streets," he points out. But when the disabled person was a wealthy and ambitious politician such as FDR, the disability had to be downplayed, if not actually denied as much as possible, to maintain the candidate's political viability.

Part of the fascination of Tobin's book is his account of how Eleanor Roosevelt, with the help of FDR's chief political operative, Louis Howe, actively conspired to downplay his illness and later his disability to the press and public, a deception that would continue for the rest of Roosevelt's life. It is a bit sobering to realize that, in today's squalid media environment, FDR probably would never have been elected president.

The tragic irony of Roosevelt's illness was that, had he not had quite so wealthy and sheltered a childhood, he might never have contracted polio in the first place. While Tobin may go rather too far in discussing the fecal aspects of polio transmission (squeamish readers may want to tread lightly around page 23), he is undoubtedly correct in asserting that FDR's privileged upbringing, during which he was exposed to relatively few youngsters his own age, not to mention their germs, might have contributed to his susceptibility to the various minor illnesses from which he suffered throughout his life, as well as the polio that crippled him.

Once he was infected, it got worse, as the eminent physician who initially treated him misdiagnosed the case, losing time and quite possibly squandering the chance for FDR to regain the use of his legs. As hard as he would try to make a full recovery in years to come, FDR would never again be able to walk unaided. This, of course, did not stop him from winning the governorship of New York, the presidency of the United States, or serving three full terms in the White House and part of a fourth. Not to mention helping the country recover from the Great Depression and winning World War II.

It was a long road back from incapacitation to the White House, and one gets the feeling that Tobin is sometimes less than generous in giving credit to the people around FDR who assisted in his recovery. Eleanor Roosevelt and Howe both had to contend with FDR's formidable Wagnerian mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt, who wanted nothing more for her only child after his illness than a life devoid of all excitement, divorced from politics, as an invalid living in retirement at Hyde Park. But Eleanor Roosevelt and Howe both knew that politics was in FDR's blood and that the hope of higher office gave him a motivation to keep working at his recovery that he wouldn't have otherwise. His mother might want her son to leave public life entirely, but his wife and friend helped make it possible for FDR to continue in his career. Tobin might, and perhaps should, have given them more credit.

"The particular way in which Roosevelt came back from his illness," Tobin writes, "exhibited the essential habits of mind and action that he would deploy during the Great Depression and World War II: improvisation, experimentation, and perseverance in the face of enormous trouble. ... The way he fought against his paralysis, trying one thing, then another when the first thing failed, and then a third, was perfectly reflected in his pragmatic response to the crises of his presidency."

It will always be a moot point whether his illness made FDR, as his wife fervently believed, a person more attuned to the sufferings of others, but it challenged him and eventually made him a stronger person. While there will never be an end to the books on FDR, this one gives us a valuable look at a lesser-known aspect of his extraordinary life.